Pomona Prof Says Goblins Are Jews

Is he a Jew?

At a recent conference in Chicago, Pomona religious studies professor, Oona Eisenstadt talked about Jews, Jesus, and Harry Potter. Yes seriously.

Let me quote the relevant paragraphs.

Oona Eisenstadt, an assistant professor of religious studies at Pomona College, took a different approach, exploring ways in which the Potter series functions as a Christian allegory. She suggested that, in the series, Rowling has effectively split each of the major New Testament roles in two, saying, "Rowling has made the split in order to facilitate a differentiated theological understanding.'' For example, Eisenstadt said, Dumbledore and Harry Potter represent Jesus, with Potter as Jesus's human incarnation, who dies and is reborn to defeat Voldemort, and with Dumbledore as Jesus in heaven, as a divine intercessor. She described Snape and Draco Malfoy as two aspects of Judas, and the horcruxes and the hallows as two facets of the afterlife. Most provocatively, Eisenstadt, who teaches Jewish studies, suggested that the goblins and the Ministry of Magic both stand in for the Jewish community as seen by anti-Semites. "Rowling takes the rapacious and unscrupulous characteristics of the Jews (as seen by anti-Semites) and assigns these to a non-human species,'' she said. She noted that the goblins are "small, hunched and wizened,'' love money and precious metals, work as goldsmiths, are hoarders, run the bank, and cheat when they can. "Clearly the goblins are the anti-Semites' Jews,'' she said. "The other side of the anti-Semitic conception of Jews is legalism,'' she said, "and legalism is the quality of the Ministry of Magic." Eisenstadt said the ministry "is unquestionably the Pharisees,'' and said that as the ministry's role evolves during the Potter series, "the reader can not help but understand it as a commentary on politics at large.''

(One observation by Eisenstadt that caught my attention was her critique of the Hogwarts administration for allowing a Sorting Hat to assign children to houses with others of the same personality type. "An enlightened school board would break up Slytherin,'' she said. "But there is no enlightened school board in the wizarding world.")

I'm intrigued by the new set of questions: Does this mean that Jesus (a.k.a. Dumbledore) is gay? More importantly, now that we know goblins are Jews, does that mean Pomona will ban the Harry Potter books, like it did with the alma mater? Or will they ban goblins outright like they did Jewish professors back in 40s?

Come to think of it, I only see goblins up at Mudd.

Letter from CMC Econ. and Accounting Prof. Joshua Rossett to a Future President Obama

H/t: Claudia Rossett's blog, The Rossett Report.

Dear President Obama,

During the campaign you repeatedly said that if I make $250,000 or less, my taxes will not go up by even “one cent.” When McCain called you on this, you mocked him.

Therefore, my plan is to stay under $250,000 per year from now on, and to use the 2008 tax code to file my taxes. That will ensure that I do not pay one cent more. Of course, I have the capability to make more and contribute more to our national productivity, but I do not think it will make sense for me to do so. Here is why.

First off, let’s assume that you will not raise spending so that we can focus just on taxes.

On the campaign trail, you’ve also repeatedly promised $1000 “tax reduction” to 95% of workers and their families ($500 for individuals). It also says this right on your website, here. (”Cut taxes for 95 percent of workers and their families with a tax cut of $500 for workers or $1,000 for working couples.”) Since there are over 110 million households in the lower 95%, this adds up to transfers from the top 1.5% of households (that is how many make over $250,000) to the bottom 95% of maybe $80 billion per year.

Evidently the roughly 3.5% of households that make less than $250,000 per year but are above the 95th percentile will get no tax reduction but also not pay once cent more in taxes. That applies to all households in approximately from roughly $150,000 to $250,000.

That leaves you with 1.7 million households making $250,000 per year or more. Based on figures for 2005, in total these households make about $562 billion per year. That’s a lot of money! And you only have to take about a seventh of it to pay for your transfer. However, your website also promises to raise their top marginal rate to no more than about 39% (your website says “But no family will pay higher tax rates than they would have paid in the 1990s.” Since the current top marginal rate is 35%, that is an increase of 4%. Assuming that rate only applies to income above $250,000 (otherwise the taxes on those below $250,000 would see their taxes go up at least a cent), that leaves $562 billion – 1.7 million x $250,000 = $137 billion that could be taxed at a rate higher than 35%. 4% of $137 billion is just under $5.5 billion, which is a bit short of the $80 billion needed.

So your tax policy alone will result in about a $75 billion shortfall per year compared to our current tax system, which is already running a very large deficit.

So what marginal top tax rate would allow you to pay for this transfer? Assuming that those earning over $250,000 are happy to continue working as hard as they do even if you greatly increase the taxes on their earnings over $250,000, the top rate would have to be approximately 58% higher than the 35% rate to pay for the $80 billion transfer to the lower 95% of the distribution. That is, the top rate necessary to pay just for the first item promised under the tax heading on your website would require a top marginal rate of about 93%.

OK. So you are only off by about a factor of about 15 on how much you will raise the top rate to pay for the “spreading the wealth around” part of your economic plans. No big deal.

There is just one problem with this. If you tax every dollar of earnings above $250,000 at 93%, no one will bother working to make more than $250,000. Suppose you are able to earn $125 per hour (just about enough to make $250,000 per year). If you get to keep 7% of that, after tax earnings on each dollar above $250,000 would fall to $8.75 per hour. Do you think people in that tax bracket will do a lot of extra hours at $8.75 per hour?

But of course you promise a lot of additional tax cuts on your website: “Provide generous tax cuts for low- and middle-income seniors, homeowners, the uninsured, and families sending a child to college or looking to save and accumulate wealth.” Hard to say how much more you will have to raise the top rate to pay for this, since you don’t define “generous”. So let’s call it 7% on top of what we figured above. That would provide an additional $9.5 billion per year to pay for all of the other generous tax cuts you propose. However, it also brings the top rate to 100%. It’s not too wild a guess to say that no one earning $250,000 per year will do additional work if they get to keep none of the additional money they earn.

Then you also promise a lot of additional spending. Estimates are a trillion dollars over the next four years. So let’s be conservative and call it $200 billion per year. How much more do we need to raise the top rate to pay for this? Well, if we stick to just the household income above $250,000 per year, the top marginal rate necessary to bring in $289.5 billion ($80 billion for the transfer + $9.5 billion of other generous cuts + $200 billion in new spending) is 246%. However, you can’t raise the rate beyond 100% (at least, I don’t think you can), so perhaps you can start taxing income below $250,000 per year to pay for this additional spending. So you will quickly discover that you will have to raise taxes on maybe just a few more people. Maybe even everyone who actually currently pays income tax.

Hence I plan to hold you to your word, make no more than $249,999 per year, and pay using the 2008 tax schedule to ensure that I will not pay one cent more than before.

Good luck balancing your budget.

Best wishes,

Joshua Rosett
Professor of Economics and Accounting
Claremont, CA


[Ed. Note: As initially posted, the calculations above pointed to a 92%, marginal rate on Joe's ambitions. Adding in some additional relevant information, that turned out to be optimistic -- as explained in the revised text above, Joe's marginal rate would actually come to 93%.]

My Interview with Ashwin Navin, Creator of the Claremont Independent and BitTorrent

Interview With a Founding Father

Charles Johnson

During its short twelve years on campus, the Claremont Independent has attracted some of Claremont McKenna's best and brightest. These past two years alone Elise Viebeck CMC '10 and John Wilson CMC '07 won back-to-back Breindel awards, with the accompanying internships and $10,000 prizes. While former editors Kevin Vance CMC '08 and John Wilson now write for The Weekly Standard and the New York Post respectively, Daniel Pawson CMC '03 recently became the fourth biggest winner in Jeopardy! history, taking home more than $170,000.

That standard for excellence started with one of its founders, Ashwin Navin CMC '99. Navin graduated from Claremont McKenna with a dual degree in Government and Economics. After stints at Yahoo!; Goldman, Sachs & Co; and Merrill Lynch, Navin founded BitTorrent, Inc. in 2004. Navin leans libertarian and BitTorrent reflects his philosophical underpinnings.

I had the opportunity to ask Navin questions via email for this issue of the Claremont Independent.


CI: Describe for us the process of founding the Claremont Independent. I've read that it first debuted decades ago at Pomona College. Please tell us some of that history.

Ashwin Navin (AN): The Claremont Independent did originate at Pomona College; however, we didn't have any overlap with that group of founders. We knew of them through the CI's original faculty advisor, Prof. Fred Sontag [Professor of Philosophy at Pomona]. The name of the publication and the underlying spirit of "anti-political correctness" were the same, but that's about all I can say we had in common. We met with Prof. Sontag to gather as much history as we could, but fundamentally we started from scratch with our own vision, mission statement, and editorial voice. We also had better technology than our predecessors. Today's staff enjoys the Web as a means to reach the CI audience, which is a big improvement over what we used (Pagemaker, Photoshop, and copy machines), which was also a leap forward from whatever they had at Pomona (probably word processors, scissors and glue).

The Claremont Independent was a creative outlet for a bunch of libertarians, a chance for conservatives to loosen up those neckties and shed those blue blazers, and a tool to make an impact on our surroundings - a five-college campus that we were quite proud to call our own. The Student Government was an outlet as well, but I can't say that ASCMC had anywhere near the efficacy that the CI had for us. With the CI we inspired protests and rallies at Pitzer, demands for our expulsion from faculty members whose curriculum we chose to publicly examine, and even fire hazards when our opponents burned copies of our humble little publication and shoved them in our dorm rooms.

The convulsions were a symptom of a body rejecting a dose of medicine. I would never be so self-righteous as to say that our message was a cure for any ill, but rather we challenged an entire population that had become numb and even intolerant of anything other than unquestioned "Political Correctness" propagated by pre-existing campus journalism that was entirely one-sided. Lacking a healthy exchange of alternative views, the intolerance was undermining our ability to develop as complete individuals. Our mission at the CI was to Maintain Truth and Excellence by providing our readers a contrary perspective that would challenge the predominant ethos of higher education across the country. The irony is that Political Correctness places "tolerance" the highest among its "virtues," and if that was true, we would not have needed the CIat all.

How would you say writing for the Independent has influenced your career? How has Claremont McKenna influenced your thinking?

Those who knew me over my four years in Claremont would say I was a different person from beginning to end. I don't agree with that characterization but it definitely was a period of significant personal development. My core values didn't change much but I did learn how to position myself and my views next to others. Of course one would have to be thick-headed not to evolve in the presence of great minds and great books while paying a healthy tuition.

How did my metamorphosis happen? Probably inspired by Prof. Alan Heslop (founding director of the Rose Institute) who used to paraphrase the words of Odessa Rose (founding funder of the Rose Institute); Dr. Heslop told us that Odessa achieved her position in life because she was one who reached for opportunities "with both hands." At Claremont, I was never satisfied being among a group of entirely like-minded people. I loved a good debate, relished being in the minority, and thrived on irony and contradiction. I would encourage any students to "try on someone else's shoes" while in college because it's a great environment to take personal risk. If you're a meat and potatoes Republican, go eat vegan with the Pitzer crunchies. If you're parents are hippies and there isn't a drug or contraceptive you haven't tried, go straight edge or go join ROTC for a semester or two (be careful what documents you sign though!). I guarantee you will learn a lot about yourself, and whatever convictions you'll hold at the end will be more firmly planted.

Do you think that BitTorrent has libertarian or conservative principles underlying it that make it such a success?

AJ Liebling was a prominent journalist in the first half of the 20th century and had some extraordinary insights into media creation and dissemination. One of his more notable claims: "freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one." This was abundantly clear to the CI founders because distribution was expensive. We struggled in the early days to get the paper funded, produced regularly, and distributed. We relied entirely on donations and volunteerism. But this labor of love was all worthwhile when you could hold a freshly printed copy in your hands and imagine the smiles it would inspire across our friends' faces and the contortions it would illicit among the others.

And that was the second lesson. When a minority, independent voice somehow manages to escape the barriers that stifle it, that breakthrough is met with violent convulsions by the established gatekeepers. The CI taught me a small lesson about the power of the media: "The power of the pen is indeed mightier than the sword." And those that have the power cherish it and carry it like some kind of divine right. They prop up its perceived professionalism and forge their own elite class of those "in the know." Traditionally there were several barriers to entry into media, and money was a significant one. Distribution was as well. Advertisers did not want to buy against multiple outlets. People didn't want to buy more than one newspaper. The airwaves only allowed a certain number of channels or stations. Distributors only had a certain number of store shelves or movie screens. And when a media publisher gets a hold of those resources, it does everything it can to lock itself in and monopolize the real estate to prevent competition from more publishers and from creative individuals who didn't fit their mold. The talent that exists in these channels that have been accepted by the establishment, are naturally those who enjoy self-expression, are self-important, and want to professionalize their creativity. News flash: "creative types" are not Right Wingers generally speaking.

And that brings me to my last point. AJ Liebling brought us another pearl of wisdom: "people everywhere confuse what they read in newspapers with news." If caught during a moment of honesty, anyone who has ever been an editor or journalist (amateur or professional) will attest that it's impossible for the editorial process truly to rise above the perspectives of those who create and edit the output. The human perspective is inevitably casted on the "news."

All these lessons from founding the CI stick with me today as a co-founder of BitTorrent and steward of the "BitTorrent Generation" (as our user base has been called from time-to-time). BitTorrent exhibits a lot of Libertarian ideals and is an example of true digital freedom. It exemplifies market principles, tends toward decentralization, and operates on principles of meritocracy. There have been few technologies in the history of mankind which have had such massive impact on the ability for people to communicate and learn from each other. I believe BitTorrent sits among that handful of important breakthroughs, along with the printing press, broadcast radio and TV, and the Internet itself. Why? Modern publishing technology (like BitTorrent, blogs and YouTube) forge a level playing field for creativity. There is no longer scarcity or a stranglehold on distribution that locks people out of self-expression. Anyone can speak to the world in any format, without filters, and as a result freedom of speech has never been so available to the masses.

Libertarianism as a political philosophy is built on the idea that the government which governs least governs best. Why? Because a heavy-handed regime inhibits one's ability to realize his full potential by penalizing his strength and forgiving his weakness, stifling civil liberties and opportunities for self-expression, and questioning human compassion and the ability for people to care for their own communities. In a nutshell, BitTorrent is a technical application of Libertarian principles: "do as little with central authority as possible."

With BitTorrent, traditional communications barriers like budget constraints, scarcity of distribution, geographic disparity, and even government censorship have been torn down faster than the Berlin Wall in the fall of '89. And anyone who has had a taste of this digital freedom, who has been freed of the shackles that locks down information and stifles expression, knows its empowerment and role among a Free People.

Charles Johnson is a sophomore at CMC and an assistant editor of the CI.

John Bolton and the Winston Churchill Dinner at the Island Hotel With Update

Brian T. Kennedy, publisher of The Claremont Review of Books and president of The Claremont Institute graciously invited me and several other Claremont students to hear John Bolton give the talk at the Winston Churchill dinner. We stayed late into the morning, talking with several other CRB staff members and local bloggers.

The event started off as every event ought to: with prayer, the pledge of allegiance, and the national anthem. Brian T. Kennedy gave an excellent speech about how we must continue to defend the Republic even when all seems lost.

Soon thereafter America's Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton gave his speech.

After quoting Winston Churchill, Bolton had several observations on the current state of foreign policy. Ambassador Bolton served in that capacity at the United Nations until 2006, when the Democrats and a few turncoat Republicans torpedoed his chances of re-appointment.

Here are some of the things that Bolton said, according to my admittedly poor notes.

The proliferation of weapons of mass destruction is "the greatest threat we face today" and yet many don't treat it as serious as it should have been treated. They hope that by replacing our current leaders with those seen as more palpable we would raise our profile in the world, but this assumption fundamentally misunderstands America's place in the world. Opinion polls go up and they go down, but a president has to pursue the national interest of America and her allies. Bolton then cited a number of times where the president did the "right thing" and still had polls that turned against him. To suggest that polling is evidence of might is naiive.

He continued. Some suggest that the "unipolar world" has passed and that America is on the decline. But people who suggest that this is China or India's century are ahistorical. He then cited all the social upheaval during China's last century -- occupation by Japan, overthrow of various governments, the Great Leap Forward -- and said to generalize about China's last twenty years of economic growth is to ignore their turbulent history. Then Bolton had his best line of the night, "If there's one lesson history teaches us, it is this: 'Don't bet against America.'"

Bolton criticized the State Department has being against the interests of America and to focused on stability and diplomacy. Diplomacy, Bolton reminded us, is a tactic, not a policy.
Whenever Bolton would sit around the table with the other members of the cabinet, people would say we made "progress with country X on issue Y" and everyone would nod, but would have no real sense of the progress that had been made.

You can always win agreement if you give up your position. He then turned to N. Korea which has recently been taken off the list of state sponsors of terrorism. Bolton criticized the Bush Administration for doing that without so much as consulting Japan, our strongest ally in the region. He says that N. Korea is the largest distributor of ballistic missiles and cited their work on helping Syria procure nuclear weapons on the banks of the Euphrates. He also mentioned the work of PSI, a group of signatory nations that have worked to stop the spread of nuclear weapons materials. He applauded the actions of India at halting the advance of said material to Iran from N. Korea, yet said more work needed to be done to guarantee that N. Korea wasn't going ahead with their nuclear weapons programs -- which, by his count, they have stopped and then resumed again four times in the past sixteen years.

Bolton thinks that the reason N. Korea was removed from the list of terrorist sponsors was that the State Department is trying to make things easier on them if they are going through a regime change.

He began discussing Iran.

Unfortunately, our own intelligence agencies has been complicit in helping Iran get a nuclear bomb with their release of the national security estimates. If Iran gets the bomb, it could destabilize the entire region as Egypt, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia may get nuclear weapons in order to defend themselves. By delaying for five years, the European Union has been giving the Iranians time so that they are five years closer to getting a nuke. "Negotiations have costs, as well as benefits." He said that there are few options left but to force regime change or to launch targeted strikes in Iran.

UPDATE: My old boss and friend, Ben Boychuk, also went to the Churchill Dinner and has his remarks up at Infinite Monkeys. It's worth a read through. Boychuk used to work for The Claremont Review of Books and I worked with him on the shortly lived, but still awesome, RedBlueAmerica.com.